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TRANSCRIPT:
Episode no. 307
October 15, 1999
BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Coming up, the challenge to religious relief agencies overwhelmed by a year of war and natural disaster.
And, debate about religion's role in healing.
Dr. RICHARD SLOAN (Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center): By suggesting that religious activity promotes health, you also imply the converse, which is that bad health is associated with insufficient devotion and insufficient faith.
ABERNETHY: And in Los Angeles, how big and how expensive should a cathedral be?
(Announcements)
ABERNETHY: Welcome. I'm Bob Abernethy. It's good to have you with us.
BOB ABERNETHY: This week, as hundreds died in flooding and mud slides in Mexico and a new hurricane, Irene, was threatening the Southeast, relief agencies also were battered again. Next week marks the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Mitch's deadly path through Central America and the Caribbean. And in the subsequent 12 months, religious relief groups say they've been all but overwhelmed by back-to-back disasters, both natural and manmade. Kim Lawton reports on the challenges facing relief groups caught in the deluge.
KIM LAWTON: The scenes have played out over and over again around the world this year: death, destruction, displacement, devastation; what one relief official calls a perpetual state of global emergency.
There was Hurricane Mitch: some 9,000 dead and nearly $9 billion of damage. The war in Yugoslavia: nearly 900,000 displaced and the infrastructure of Kosovo and Serbia destroyed. The earthquake in Turkey: more than 15,000 dead and at least 600,000 homeless. Hurricane Floyd: at least $6 billion of damage on the U.S. East Coast alone. The earthquake in Taiwan: an estimated $10 billion of damage. Unrest in East Timor: nearly 400,000 displaced.
Ms. DONNA DERR (Church World Service): It's just been disaster after major disaster after major disaster with huge populations of people that are very, very vulnerable.
LAWTON: Religious relief groups have played a key role in providing both short-term emergency assistance -- food, medicine and shelter -- and in long-term development projects around the world. So far in the current onslaught of emergencies, relief groups say they haven't seen donor fatigue, when people are tired of being asked and stop giving. But aid officials worry donor fatigue could still come, especially as they try to sustain contributions.
Ms. DERR: There's been a continuing strong, compassionate public out there that gives and gives wholeheartedly, but that it's been difficult in some instances if things are not within the public eye and kind of on their radar screen.
LAWTON: In the midst of the war in Yugoslavia, for example, Muslim groups and others raised millions of dollars to help Kosovar refugees. There was an initial outpouring, but contributions have trickled off at a time when concerns about the approach of winter are growing. There is also deep frustration in the aid community about having to prioritize disasters and needs. Relief officials admit that now, more than usual, many troubled places in the world are being put on a back burner in favor of more immediate crises.
Ms. NANCY LINDBORG (Mercy Corps International): In the world of triage, in the world of limited resources, I think you always end up responding to the most pressing. Of course you have to pay attention to that. In the meantime, you have all these other brewing problems around the globe.
LAWTON: And there's still another complication. The international work of many relief groups depends both on private donations and on government money and supplies allocated by the U.S. Congress. But in the current budget debate, Congress is proposing cutting back the amount of money designated for international disaster assistance.
Mr. SERGE DUSS (World Vision): So it puts us in a very, very difficult place when the United States, at this point, is not willing to assume its fair share of responding and helping to respond to emergencies around the world.
LAWTON: The last few months have been unusually difficult ones for the humanitarian world. But religiously affiliated groups say their people will persevere in the work they feel called to do, even in the midst of the overload.
Ms. LINDBORG: People are acting out of their convictions and out of their beliefs that they bring from their faith. And that makes them extraordinarily committed, makes them able to be in very difficult situations, see very difficult things.
LAWTON: I'm Kim Lawton reporting.
BOB ABERNETHY: The U.S. Supreme Court this week declined to review three more church-state disputes. That left standing a court decision in Maine that permitted tuition vouchers for students attending secular private schools but not parochial schools. In New York, the court's actions sustained a decision forbidding creation of a special school district for an Hasidic Jewish community. And in Pennsylvania, religious goods and publications will still be subject to sales tax. No national precedents were set in the court's actions, but some observers believe the justices may be signaling they're not ready to redraw the lines separating government and religion.
BOB ABERNETHY: Updating a story we reported this summer in this week of the major-league championship series, a victory for a minor-league baseball team in a religious discrimination lawsuit. The American Civil Liberties Union had sued the Hagerstown, Maryland, Suns over a special promotion that gave a $2 discount to fans who brought church bulletins to Sunday games. The ACLU said the discount and the advertising of it showed an inappropriate preference for people who go to church. A Maryland judge this week ruled the discount does not violate the law. The ACLU will likely appeal.
BOB ABERNETHY: The political power of the pulpit was on display in Alabama this week as voters heeded the calls of their ministers, turned out in high numbers and soundly defeated a state lottery referendum. Governor Don Siegelman had campaigned for the lottery as a way to support education programs, but it was strongly opposed on moral grounds by the leaders of nearly all Alabama's Christian denominations. In late August, polls had indicated that the lottery had a 20-point lead.
BOB ABERNETHY: One of the nation's largest Christian denominations is suspending its financial support for the National Council of Churches. The United Methodists will no longer help fund the NCC until it reforms its management and deals with long-standing budget deficits. The NCC acknowledges the financial problem and says the United Methodist action will prompt it to complete, swiftly, reforms already under way. The NCC will be 50 years old next month. It represents 50 million Christians in 35 denominations, and is devoted to promoting Christian unity through theological dialogue and social service projects.
BOB ABERNETHY: Overseas in Nazareth, a threat from the Vatican in the controversy over land adjacent to the Basilica of the Annunciation. That's the site at which tradition says the angel Gabriel told Mary she would give birth to Jesus. The Israeli government announced Wednesday a grudging compromise between feuding Muslim and Christian leaders on what to do with the plot. Muslims want to build a mosque there. Christians want a plaza for millennium pilgrims. The Israeli government said both would be done, but on Thursday, a Vatican spokesman said any mosque would be a provocation and could derail Pope John Paul II's expected visit to Nazareth next spring.
BOB ABERNETHY: The Vatican this week gave cautious approval to some forms of bioengineering. It reaffirmed its opposition to human cloning and test-tube fertilization, saying they violate human dignity. But church officials said bioengineering that seeks to cure an evil, such as fighting disease, is good. The Vatican also accepted bioengineering of plants and animals as long as consumers are informed of the genetic changes.
BOB ABERNETHY: And now our cover story: new studies and new debates about the role of prayer in healing. Can the power of the spiritual ever be measured scientifically? If a doctor tells a patient prayer can help, does that imply a lack of faith if the patient does not get well? Betty Rollin reports on the new studies and the new controversy.
Reverend Canon JEFF GOLLIHER (The Cathedral of St. John the Divine): Lord have mercy. The Lord be with you. Let us pray.
BETTY ROLLIN: Each week at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, Reverend Canon Jeff Golliher conducts a healing service. Forty-four-year-old Robert Parra, who suffers both from thyroid cancer and chronic asthma, is greatly comforted, he says, by the laying on of hands.
Mr. ROBERT PARRA (Worshiper): I feel warmth. I feel tranquility. I feel peace. I feel like I'm in heaven for just seconds.
ROLLIN: And you feel well?
Mr. PARRA: And I feel well.
ROLLIN: Sick people often turn to their religion for help or comfort, for hope. Many hospitals have chapels, and clergy is usually available for patients who want spiritual counsel. The benefits of religion and prayer in this context have not been questioned, nor have the benefits been scientifically tested until now, with studies that seem to show that religion not only advances spiritual well-being, but improves physical health.
Daily religious practices -- among them, Buddhist meditation, Jewish davening and Catholic rosary recitations --have been found to lower heart and respiration rate. A recent controversial study conducted by Duke University Medical Center indicates that those who regularly attend religious services live longer. Most controversial are studies of intercessory prayer, sometimes called distant healing. These are prayers offered for sick people by others at distant locations.
Unidentified Woman #1: Twelve different religions will be praying for you during your angioplasty and hospitalization, OK?
Ms. PAT DORAN: Sounds interesting.
ROLLIN: Pat Doran, a patient at Washington Hospital Center, is one of 1,500 participants at six different hospitals in Duke University's mantra study, which will test the efficacy of long-distance prayer. Half of the patients will be prayed for, and half will not, and no one will know who is in which group. The prayer-givers include Carmelite nuns in Maryland, Buddhist monks in Nepal and, in the Jewish tradition, written prayers will be placed in the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
Of course, there's no way to know if those patients who are not being prayed for by the designated prayers are in fact being prayed for by, say, family members or by themselves.
Pat's doctor, a co-investigator of the study and head of this unit, is himself a believer in long-distance healing.
Dr. AUGUSTO PICHARD (Washington Hospital Center): Energy can be transferred a long distance, and if energy is transferred there is influence at the other end.
ROLLIN: Another believer and early proponent of long-distance healing, Dr. Larry Dossey, was recently invited to speak at New York Hospital. The proof that long-distance prayer works for humans, he says, is that it works for animals, plants, even bacteria.
Dr. LARRY DOSSEY (Author, "Reinventing Medicine"): In study after study, you can show that the bacteria that are prayed for grow faster than the controls that aren't prayed for.
ROLLIN: Enter Dr. Richard Sloan of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, who believes that such theories are bunk and that most studies linking religion and health are scientifically flawed. For example, says Dr. Sloan, churchgoers who live longer are more likely to have good health habits and social support.
Dr. RICHARD SLOAN (Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center): The problem with many of those studies is that they fail to control for the physical condition of people prior to going to church. People who are too sick can't get to church in the first place.
ROLLIN: Dr. Sloan also has strong ethical objections.
Dr. SLOAN: By suggesting that religious activity promotes health, you also imply the converse, which is that bad health is associated with insufficient devotion and insufficient faith. And that is a terrible message to send, even if you only imply it, even if you don't say it directly. It's bad enough to be sick; it's worse still to be gravely ill. And to add to the -- to that the burden of feeling guilt and remorse because somebody argues that you've been insufficiently faithful is unconscionable.
ROLLIN: Some in the clergy, especially those who minister to the sick, also object to what they see as an inappropriate result-driven approach to religion. Chaplain Larry Vandecreek.
Chaplain LARRY VANDECREEK (The HealthCare Chaplaincy): One of my major concerns is that physicians and researchers can move to the conclusion that religion is instrumental in health and thus religion is used for health benefits, that religion becomes something that is useful.
Dr. SLOAN: It's fairly demeaning to religion to suggest that people will adopt religion purely for its instrumental value to help their health. Religion for most people isn't like a coat that you wear when the weather is bad.
ROLLIN: Reverend Canon Jeff Golliher also feels that prayer should not be focused on outcome.
Rev. GOLLIHER: Our lives are in God's hands, and we want to place our lives in God's hands, but that means also giving up an idea about what the results of it are going to be.
Mr. PARRA: Then there's a time that you don't get that call or that answer back immediately, which is problematic, but I -- God works on his own time, I figure.
ROLLIN: So for religious people, the question is not whether religion has a role in health, but what that role should be and can be. I'm Betty Rollin for RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY in New York.
BOB ABERNETHY: In other news, the Reverend Billy Graham launched his evangelistic crusade in St. Louis this week, his second and last crusade for this year. Thousands packed the Trans World Dome for opening night Thursday when Graham was joined by gospel pop star Michael W. Smith and gymnast Mary Lou Retton. The 80-year-old evangelist, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, appeared well as he preached his classic salvation sermon. At a news conference, Graham was asked about his health.
Reverend BILLY GRAHAM (Evangelist): My health is excellent except for a few things, and I won't enumerate them. My wife says don't give that whole list everywhere you go. She's the one that's very sick at the moment; in fact, she's very sick.
ABERNETHY: Mrs. Graham suffers from complications resulting from a broken hip.
BOB ABERNETHY: In Los Angeles, the City of Angels, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese is building a huge new cathedral, and its size and the cost, $163 million, have provoked sharp protests from Catholics ministering to the poor. Critics have nicknamed the project the 'Taj Mahony' after L.A.'s Cardinal Roger Mahony. Our correspondent, Vic Lee, visited the construction site with the cardinal.
VIC LEE: From the air, it looks like a construction site for a new sports stadium. But when completed, this will be a new Roman Catholic cathedral which can seat 3,000 people, the biggest in capacity, if not in size, in the United States. It's on five and a half acres of prime real estate in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. The cost: more than $163 million. Its spiritual architect is Cardinal Roger Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, the largest and wealthiest archdiocese in the United States.
Cardinal ROGER MAHONY (Los Angeles): Through your eternal word, you created all things.
LEE: Cardinal Mahony says the cathedral will be the spiritual Mecca of downtown LA.
Cardinal MAHONY: The cathedral is the city's really gonna be premier sacred space. This place is God's house, and it's a place to welcome all of God's people.
LEE: The cathedral complex, which has been dubbed the 'Taj Mahony' by its critics, will include a 55,000-square-foot conference facility and a residence for the cardinal, all this surrounding a huge plaza plus an underground parking garage. For fund-raising purposes, the archdiocese built a mockup of the sanctuary. All of the money comes from private donations. One of the biggest single gifts comes from media mogul Rupert Murdoch; born Catholic but now a Presbyterian, he gave $10 million.
Mr. RUPERT MURDOCH (Chairman, News Corp.): ...that is being built to assist the Catholic Church, it will clearly serve as a center for many ecumenical, interfaith and cultural endeavors.
LEE: Another big booster is the mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan, who kicked in $1 million of his own money.
Mayor RICHARD RIORDAN (Los Angeles): The new cathedral will help Los Angeles. It will make the city better so businesses will want to come to this city, tourists will want to come to this city.
LEE: The venerable and much smaller St. Vibianus used to be the main cathedral. Pope John Paul II visited there in 1987. But the 1994 Northridge earthquake did irreparable damage, and the cathedral had to be abandoned.
Clearly, the city of Los Angeles needs a new cathedral; few dispute that. Some, however, question just how big and just how pricey a house of worship ought to be.
Ever since the groundbreaking last October, advocates for the poor from the Catholic Worker Movement have demonstrated at the construction site.
Mr. JEFF DIETRICH (Catholic Workers Movement): My concern is that the Catholic Church appears to be the church of the rich, that we're -- that, as a church, we're more concerned about garnering large donations from wealthy people than we are about serving the poorest of the poor.
LEE: The Catholic worker group runs a soup kitchen in East Los Angeles, feeding the homeless and hungry three days a week. The volunteers always begin their work with a prayer.
This is their ministry: the mean streets of East L.A., less than a mile from the new cathedral. It's the largest concentration of homeless people in the United States.
Mr. MIKE WIENIEWSKI (Catholic Workers Movement): It's quite a contrast that we're putting $160-plus million into a building vs. people who are homeless and when the Lord tells us to -- our faith calls us to take care of those weaker than we before we start sinking money into buildings.
LEE: But Cardinal Mahony says the cathedral will be beneficial to rich and poor alike.
Cardinal MAHONY: A cathedral in a great city is a common ground, and it is a place where you see everybody mixing, the poorest of the poor to the wealthiest, the most influential. Go to any big cathedral -- St. Patrick's, New York, St. Peter's in Rome -- you go -- in Mexico City, anyplace, and just sit there, and everybody comes and goes. It is a common ground. So we envision it as a place of great welcoming, where people will be inspired by God, but also come and mingle and get to know each other.
LEE: Every sign is that the new cathedral will be built. Most of the money has already been raised. The Our Lady of Angels Cathedral should open by the end of the year 2001. For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, this is Vic Lee in Los Angeles.
ABERNETHY: People in the fund-raising business say it's often much easier to raise money for an elaborate and expensive project than it is to raise money for the poor.
BOB ABERNETHY: Now this month's best-selling religion books, as reported by Publishers Weekly. In hardcover, the Dalai Lama's "The Art of Happiness" is number one, and his "Ethics for a New Millennium" number five. Several end-times novels are two, three and four. "She Said Yes" is number six; it's the story of Cassie Bernall, the Columbine High School victim who many Christians consider a martyr.
BOB ABERNETHY: Another book that deserves mention, even though it's not a best-seller, is "Meeting God," a beautifully illustrated account of the devotions of the world's 800 million Hindus. The author is Stephen Huyler, a cultural anthropologist, art historian and photographer whose pictures are now on display at the Museum of Natural Science in Houston. Huyler talked with us there about the home shrines at which Hindus worship every day.
Mr. STEPHEN HUYLER (Author and Photographer): The house is the center of all communities, of every part of Indian society. And the shrine is the center of every home. So in a sense, the shrine is the nucleus of all of Indian culture.
So this is a fairly typical shrine from south India, household shrine. One would open the doors to worship. It's sort of symbolic of opening the doors to one's own heart and to the experience of devotion. This is a shrine to the god Vishnu, who's one of the primary Hindu gods. In the foreground are flowers that would be placed in daily devotion, a fossilized ammonite, a fossilized shell that symbolizes the duality of all existence: masculine, feminine; light, dark; good, evil; wrong, right.
Over here, we have another shrine. It might be a community shrine -- it might be a household shrine, but in opening the doors, we see into a community deity. In this case, it's the goddess Santoshi Ma. In the shrine, we have objects that are associated with her worship. She's again prayed to for the health, welfare of the family and the entire community. You can see all of the gifts that have been given to this shrine in gratitude for prayers answered.
All of these objects would be placed in the shrine, but they're individual; the choice is individual. It's not something that says that you must -- you worship in this way, you must have this in the shrine. It's what you personally respond to. And that's true with all applications of Hinduism. Hinduism is a very individual religion that allows a lot of personal choice.
BOB ABERNETHY: Finally, all of us associated with RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY want to acknowledge the death last weekend of Thomas Lake. He was chairman emeritus of the Lilly Endowment, our principal funder, and a great friend of this program. He was 80 years old.
BOB ABERNETHY: And that's our program for now. Thanks for joining us. As we leave you, a selection from the World Festival of Sacred Music this past week in Los Angeles.
(Excerpt from music)
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